Amid the coronavirus pandemic, people in developed countries are assured of ample supplies of clean water to wash their hands as often as needed to protect themselves from the virus. And yet, nearly a third of the world’s population is not even assured of clean water for drinking.

University researchers have now found a way to address this problem by using sunlight—a resource that everyone can access—to evaporate and purify contaminated water with greater than 100 percent efficiency.

How is this possible?

In a paper in Nature Sustainability, researchers in the laboratory of Chunlei Guo, professor of optics, demonstrate how a burst of femtosecond laser pulses etch the surface of a normal sheet of aluminum into a superwicking (water-attracting), super energy-absorbing material.

Experiments by the lab show that their new method reduces the presence of all common contaminants, such as detergent, dyes, urine, heavy metals, and glycerin, to safe levels for drinking.

Read more and see a video here.

The Medical Center has been awarded another $24.3 million from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health to continue its efforts to turn scientific discoveries into health benefits faster. This new award brings URMC’s total funding from NCATS to $132 million, dating back to 2006 when it became one of the first 12 institutions in the nation to receive one of these awards.

“The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the clear and urgent need for biomedical research – especially translational research,” says University President Sarah Mangelsdorf. “As one of the nation’s leading research universities, we are devoted to advancing scientific understanding and promoting health and this award will help us continue those efforts.”

The award continues funding for the University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UR CTSI). The Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program is the largest single grant program at the NIH. As a testament to its leadership in translational science, the UR CTSI was also selected as the coordinating center for the CTSA Program in 2017. Read more here.

Click here for a video of Medical Center CEO Mark Taubman talking about the significance of the CTSI renewal and the recently announced Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center led by John Foxe and Jonathan Mink.

The difference between infected individuals who never show a single symptom of COVID-19, and those who spend weeks in intensive care, seems to lie in a careful balance of the immune response. In the beginning of the disease, the immune system helps fight off the virus. But for those who land in the hospital, this early, helpful immune response gives way to uncontrolled over-activation of the immune system, causing system-wide inflammation and severe complications.

Three COVID-19 inpatient clinical trials currently running at the Medical Center attack the disease at both ends of this balance.

The trials have involved:

• Remdesivir and baricitinib for patients with moderate symptoms.
• Ruxolitinib, to treat patients as young as 12 who have very severe COVID-19 disease and need to be on a ventilator.
• A pair of monoclonal antibodies, collectively referred to as REGN-CoV2, which can reduce viral shedding and speed recovery of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Read more here.

Can convalescent plasma treat, prevent COVID-19?

In addition, the Medical Center is joining two national clinical trials testing whether transfusions of plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients (also called convalescent plasma) can prevent infection in healthy volunteers or speed recovery in people with mild COVID-19 infections.

The trial will enroll 28 local volunteers: 9 healthy volunteers who are at high risk of infection – like frontline healthcare workers – and 18 people with mild-COVID-19. Read More »

Two members of the Department of Biology have received expedited funding awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study biological processes involved in COVID-19.

Dragony Fu, an assistant professor of biology, and Jack Werren, the Nathaniel and Helen Wisch Professor of Biology, will apply their expertise in cellular and evolutionary biology to research proteins involved in infections from COVID-19. The funding is part of the National Science Foundation’s Rapid Response Research program to mobilize funding for high priority projects.

By better understanding the specific biological mechanisms and proteins involved in COVID-19 infection, scientists will be able to better develop effective treatments and vaccines to fight the disease.

The Project Imagine team has received more than 500 “big and bold ideas” on how the University might change the way it operates – and would like to receive at least that many more.

You can submit your ideas here by July 31. Read more about the project here.

In our current research environment, quick access to breaking developments is vitally important. Preprints, which are versions of an article that are posted to a repository before publication, allow researchers to share and provide access to their results sooner. Here are a few preprints the University Libraries’ Sustainable Scholarship team has seen trending (based on downloads and altmetrics) this month:

• COVID-19: An Infodemic?: Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic in Social Media: A Holistic Perspective and a Call to Arms from arXiv. This work shares a computational schema for tagging, flagging, and managing creeping COVID-19 misinformation on social media.
• Evaluating COVID Research: Rapid Reviews: Covid 19 from MIT Press. This selection is a little meta, and is not truly a preprint. Rather, it’s an Open Access journal developed to check and review COVID-19 research being posted to preprint servers.
• Rise of the Machines: An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels from bioRxiv. Finally, on a topic other than COVID, this White Paper from Neuralink, an Elon Musk-funded neurotechnology group, describes their approach to Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs).
• Just for Fun: Detection dogs as a help in the detection of COVID-19: Can the dog alert on COVID-19 positive persons by sniffing axillary sweat samples? Proof-of-concept study from bioRxiv. Can Good Boys detect COVID-19? This study took place at 3 sites with 18 dogs and examined 198 (!) armpits to find out.

Have any questions or want to share what you have been reading? Get in touch with Lindsay Cronk, head of Collection Strategies & Scholarly Communications.

The Navy’s quest to power its ships by converting seawater into fuel is nearer fruition.

University chemical engineers—in collaboration with researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory, the University of Pittsburgh, and OxEon Energy—have demonstrated that a potassium-promoted molybdenum carbide catalyst efficiently and reliably converts carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, a critical step in turning seawater into fuel.

“This is the first demonstration that this type of molybdenum carbide catalyst can be used on an industrial scale,” says Marc Porosoff, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. In a paper in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, the researchers describe an exhaustive series of experiments they conducted at molecular, laboratory, and pilot scales to document the catalyst’s suitability for scale-up.

By creating their own fuel from the seawater they travel through, Navy ships could remain in continuous operation. Other than a few nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines, most navy ships must periodically align themselves alongside tanker ships to replenish their fuel oil, which can be difficult in rough weather.

Read more here.

The Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences encourages University clinicians and researchers to consider sponsoring design projects for the school’s seniors during the coming academic year.

It’s a win-win situation: students get valuable experience tackling real-world challenges; clinicians and researchers interact with future engineers (and potential grad students) and receive a fresh, often innovative perspective on a problem.

Clinicians and researchers interested in sponsoring a design project during the coming academic year are encouraged to fill out this request form in the next few weeks, before classes resume August 26. Given the social distancing and masking constraints that will be observed on our campus, project sponsorship will involve a hybrid of remote and person-to-person interactions.

You can get a sense of what constitutes a feasible project and see examples of past projects at the Senior Design Sponsorship website; more than 80 projects from last school year can also be viewed here.

Questions? Contact Paul Funkenbusch, the Hajim School’s associate dean for education and new initiatives.

Over the past nine weeks, the students in the School of Medicine and Dentistry Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program have been working virtually to complete their research projects.

View their work at a virtual poster presentation at 11 a.m. EDT Thursday, July 30. A promo video and more information about how to access each student’s presentation can be found here.

Here are important links for researchers:

• University’s COVID-19 website for important updates and guidance on working, teaching, and learning remotely
• University of Rochester Medical Center website for restrictions, resources, and news
• Office of Research and Project Administration (ORPA) site on Coronavirus 2019 resources related to sponsored programs
• University’s COVID-19 “Restart and Recovery” web page.
• The Rochester Restart weekly newsletter for a summary of updates.

Update on University-related travel: Through at least December 2020, the University is continuing to restrict University-related domestic (greater than 100 miles from campus, or travel that requires an overnight stay) and international travel (business/work/research/study). University-related travel that is considered essential may resume with approval by a Cabinet-level officer and after consultation with the director of global travel risk management (when international). To submit a request for essential travel, log into Workday (NetID required), search “Spend Authorization,” and complete the application. This will route essential travel requests to the appropriate approvers. Additional information is available on the Business Expense and Travel Reimbursement website.

What forms of COVID-19 testing is the University implementing? University experts outline the COVID-19 testing and monitoring protocols being put in place as the campus looks to reopen.

Cybercrime targeting COVID-19 vaccine research: The National Cyber Security Centre in the UK released an advisory last week providing details about a malicious cybercrime group known as APT29 (aka “Cozy Bear”) that is targeting organizations involved in COVID-19 vaccine development. The University is taking steps to identify any past attempts by this group to compromise our systems and has implemented measures to detect attacks moving forward. Here’s what you should do to protect yourself:

• Keep devices up to date: Ensure updates and security patches are installed on your devices and software. Attackers are experts at exploiting vulnerabilities in software and systems that are not kept up to date.
• Avoid reusing passwords: Don’t use the same password for every login. Using unique passwords prevents a cyber-criminal from gaining access to multiple services and systems should they obtain your credentials.
• Use multifactor authentication: The University uses Duo multifactor authentication to ensure you are requesting access, not a cyber attacker. If you receive a Duo verification notice that you did not initiate, decline the request and contact the Help Desk.
• Report suspicious email or activity: Pay attention to email messages, particularly external mail that is indicated in the subject line. Report any suspicious emails to abuse@rochester.edu or abuse@urmc.rochester.edu; report any other suspicious activity or events to your IT help desk.

Contact the University IT Help Desk at (585) 275-2000 or the ISD Help Desk at (585) 275-3200 with any security concerns or for assistance.

Engineers help create PPE for caregivers: After COVID-19 closed the University campus, Rochester mechanical engineers wanted to use their problem-solving skills to help combat the pandemic. They teamed up with Face Shields Roc, a volunteer organization producing much-needed protective face shields—and over two-and-a-half months created plastic sheets for the shields with a laser cutter and produced plastic frames on five 3-D printers.

Funding Opportunities:

• Principal investigators who are currently funded by the National Cancer Institute and whose postdoctoral fellows have temporarily lost stipend support from a non-profit funder because of COVID-19 may apply for an administrative supplement to cover the postdoctoral fellow’s salary plus applicable administrative costs for the time and effort devoted to the grant. Apply by Saturday, August 15.
• The US Department of Health and Human Services is offering funding to implement and evaluate community interventions testing the impacts of mitigation strategies to prevent COVID-19 transmission in NIH-designated health disparity populations and other vulnerable groups and already implemented, new or adapted interventions to address the adverse psychosocial, behavioral and socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic on the health of these groups. Earliest submission date: Tuesday, July 28. Application deadline: 5 p.m., Friday, August 28.
• The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases is offering funding to support basic and clinical mechanistic research on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 susceptibility, routes of infection, course of disease, morbidity and mortality in people with pre-existing diseases, including diabetes and other metabolic diseases. Letter of Intent due 5 p.m., Monday, November 16.